Waggot Engineering

Few Australian speed equipment companies would be as well known as Waggott Engineering who operated from Sydney for many years and the firm continues to operate from Northern NSW to this day.

The business was started in 1949/50 by Mery Waggott, who worked in refrigeration. Initially Waggott Engineering did general engineering and machining. Merv's brother Ken raced motorcycles and he asked Mery to do some performance work for him, mainly cams initially. From this start, the performance side of the business became quite successful and that led to even more demand. A workshop was built in Greenacre about 1952 specifically for doing performance work. Mery built his own cam grinder that was manually operated. Three more machines were built over the next few years and by the mid fifties the business was manufacturing its famous Waggott heads for sidevalve Fords along with marine conversions, scavenge pumps and intake manifolds for grey Holden sixes and sidevalve Fords.

By the mid-fifties Waggott Engineering was also into making twin overhead cam conversions for grey Holden motors. At the same time they made seven bearing girdles for the Holden engine and the business became even more involved in heavy engineering with the production of steel main bearing caps, vernier cam gears, alloy grey motor timing gears and more marine conversions for sidevalves. Nine of the Holden overhead cam conversions were manufactured and son, Peter Waggott can account for about five of these. If any readers know of the whereabouts of the remainder Peter would be grateful.

Peter entered the business in 1966 and worked alongside his father until he retired. Mery died in 1982. Peter moved part of the business to northern NSW in 1980 and ran both shops for 12 months before appointing a manager to the Sydney shop until 1991. Peter then closed this shop altogether and continues to operate the northern shop at Alstonville to this day.

The business also experimented with performance Cortina engines from 1968, at first using the original Cortina block, but later opting to cast new versions of that as well. The Alstonville shop initially concentrated on full engine reconditioning, but now does cam grinding exclusively.